Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said in a letter Wednesday to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that the department “can make better use of existing incentives in the tax code” to bolster OT, the hardware and software that underpins U.S. critical infrastructure. “A company writing code to detect an intruder inside a water plant’s controls is doing research in the ordinary sense of the word,” Cotton said. “The tax code rewards research, but it is unclear whether this research qualifies, which discourages the necessary investments in operational technology security.” Finally, Cotton asked Bessent to extend a current exception for companies that lease security equipment to utilities to the service providers as well. Under current tax code, lessors are protected, “but a company that retains ownership and sells monitoring services receives no such protection, even though the work is essentially identical,” the letter noted.